Well, better news for me: not a slipped disk. Instead, a badly sprained lower back muscle is inflamed, and expanded to the point of pinching the sciatica nerve. Still excruciating pain; but with a chance of making that muscle relax and stop pinching the nerve.

This learned after a visit to the local Med360 center, which is just around the corner from my house. No calling up to make an appointment, no waiting around at all: diagnosis while-you-wait; no blood tests, no xrays, no referrals to osteopaths or surgeons who just want to put you under the knife. Inflamation-reducing drug administered at once, and prescription for analgysic (hydrocontone) faxed to the Walgreens I always go to, also just around the corner. Then to the other side of the center, to the physical therapist, to begin therapy the same day.

Bad news: been reading up on lower back pain, and it seems in general to take a very long time to get the healing done. Like at least a month. A month of pain. Something to look forward to.

Intense pain. Inflammation. Muscle stress. Hmm…now what one thing would help to alleviate–or at least palliate, these systems?

Answer: medical cannabis. Yes, marijuana would be just the thing for this set of symptoms.

A reasonable solution? Yes. An available solution? No way…at least, not in the great state of South Carolina.

I’ve often seen pictures of old men, their backs bent, leaning forward with one hand on a hip, what you’d call stooped. I always thought it was just because that was how their bones became deformed.

Not. It’s because their in great pain, and this is the most comfortable standing position. Like them, I find myself comfortable only standing and leaning forward and down. The problem is a ruptured disk. “Slipped disk” in the familiar parlance, though disks are fixed in position, and cannot ‘slip’. Instead, it’s a hernia, a protuberance of the disk that pinches the sciatic nerve.

Painful? YOU BET painful! The sciatic nerve become pinched, causing pain to the whole hip, as well as the rest of the leg; “like there’s a hot poker in your leg,” Avis described it, and that’s a pretty good way to put it. If I stand up for any length of time, upright that is, the pain gets greater and greater, until I just want to scream.

If I’ve been walking for a while — say, 10 minutes — the pain is so excruciating I want to cry; it is a pain as great as passing a stone–which itself is said to be the closest a male can get to the experience of pain in childbirth.